Gravity Pleasure Switchback
May 19–August 05, 2023
Gallery 400, University of Illinois Chicago
Gravity Pleasure Switchback, the first major solo exhibition of Derrick Woods-Morrow, manifests itself as a euphoric dream state containing the phases and spaces inhabited by Black American Southerners. Wavering between life and death, rest and the hustle of everyday life, the exhibition is grounded in the exploration of the body as a place of boundless possibility. Woods-Morrow engages everyday materials to accentuate the vast shine, grit, and tangible labor being performed in private domesticity. Moreover, he expands on the perverse demand for Black folx to limitlessly power the public sphere.
Gravity Pleasure Switchback locates and entangles the exchanges of sexuality, desire, and the casual consumption of these energies. Inspired by Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, this installation performs wake work, embodies the ruptures, and unearths the complex relationship of private and public pleasure. Demanding visitors to pay close attention, the exhibition unravels the remnants of rest and ruin.
May 19–August 05, 2023
Gallery 400, University of Illinois Chicago
Gravity Pleasure Switchback, the first major solo exhibition of Derrick Woods-Morrow, manifests itself as a euphoric dream state containing the phases and spaces inhabited by Black American Southerners. Wavering between life and death, rest and the hustle of everyday life, the exhibition is grounded in the exploration of the body as a place of boundless possibility. Woods-Morrow engages everyday materials to accentuate the vast shine, grit, and tangible labor being performed in private domesticity. Moreover, he expands on the perverse demand for Black folx to limitlessly power the public sphere.
Gravity Pleasure Switchback locates and entangles the exchanges of sexuality, desire, and the casual consumption of these energies. Inspired by Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, this installation performs wake work, embodies the ruptures, and unearths the complex relationship of private and public pleasure. Demanding visitors to pay close attention, the exhibition unravels the remnants of rest and ruin.
Photos by Dabin Ahn